I love science. I really do, but sometimes, I wish all those researchers would just shut up. We humans are entitled to a little mystery. Like the making of sausage, we don’t need to know about everything that goes on inside us. When I savor a hot fudge sundae, for example, do I care if the experience is hedonic or eduaimonic?

Unfortunately, science ignores what I think. They’ve already decided that eating a hot fudge sundae is an hedonic pleasure, as is taking a bubble baths or lazing in a hammock on a sunny day. The experience makes me feel good but does little to improve my health. In matters of a longer life, eduaimonic pleasure is the one that counts. That’s the kind we humans experience when we hold a baby or do a kindness for someone else. Call it the “aw-w-w” feeling that makes us feel warm inside. Science says that feeling is the release of oxytocin, a potent hormone that fights stress by giving our hearts and immune systems a boost. (“How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body,” Good Housekeeping, December, 2013, pg. 78) When we are altruistic — say running an errand for a friend or volunteering at a homeless shelter — oxytocin is our reward.

Centuries ago, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, observed that “Man is by nature a social animal.” After all those years, science has proved him right. Nature has imbued us with a health dividend, bankable whenever we put someone else’s welfare ahead of our own.

Maybe knowing the difference between hedonic and eduaimonic pleasure has its uses, after all. A New Year’s resolution to work harder to help others wouldn’t go amiss. In a funny way, we’d be putting ourselves and our health first.

From a slightly different perspective, I can't help but think we Americans, we late-20th/early-21st century humans, are emphatically "putting ourselves first," and have been doing so aggressively for at least the last 100 years. It's possible a kind of collective unconscious sense that our well-being comes at a tremendous cost to our bio-support systems, is a significant driver of our angst.

You make an interesting point, Tuna. The facts support what you say about the American consumer culture. Our apetites are cultivated by commerce. We often want what we see. I suspect scientists would call this response the pursuit of hedonic pleasure. What's good for us and for the world is doing unto others. Mabye making the distinction between hedonic and eduaimonic pleasure has its value, after all.

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens. She also published the story Gustav Pavel, a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.